Friday column: In sports, a sorry state of affairs

A few days ago, The Associated Press named its 2009 Athletes of the Year.

Big whup.

The AP didn’t touch the most fiercely contested category of athletic accomplishment — Apologizer of the Year. The Anti-Fan will bravely step into the breach.

Let’s start with the men.

Right away, I know what you’re thinking: Tiger.

Now, it’s true that Woods would bag Scandal of the Year, Screw-up of the Year or Disappearance of the Year, but his Web site progression from silence to admitted “transgressions” to admitted “infidelities,” while interesting, hardly rates a blip on the apology radar screen.

Unlike the mea culpa of the NBA’s Brendan Haywood, who, after questioning the sexual orientation of Stephon Marbury, issued a statement of regret with a classic apology element — throwing someone else under the bus.

“I wasn’t trying to come off like Tim Hardaway,” Haywood blogged, essentially saying, “Hey, I might be a homophobe — but I’m not a homophobe like Hardaway! Remember him? He was awful.”

But Haywood’s apology can’t compare with that of this year’s Male Apologizer of the Year — Alex Rodriguez.

A-Rod’s apology tour began in February after Serena Roberts broke the news that he had failed a Major League Baseball drug test in 2003.

First came an ESPN interview in which the slugger, who had denied steroid use loudly and long, said he was “very sorry and deeply regretful” — but not sorry enough to forgo bashing Roberts, whom he bizarrely accused of “stalking” him and trying to break into his home.

That led to his second apology — a phone call to Roberts. Next came an apology to Rangers owner Tom Hicks — for whom he played during his drug days — followed by a news conference in which he apologized to his Yankee manager, his Yankee teammates, his Yankee fans, the metropolis of New York and the entire civilized world.

Through it all, A-Rod managed to summon excuse after excuse, and actually insist that for three years he had had no idea what was being injected into his rump. That’s an all-time sports apology.

On the women’s side, we have a home-state contestant, Lobos soccer player Elizabeth Lambert, who apologized for a thuggish display against BYU while at the same time explaining that the uproar was because of 1) poor refereeing; 2) fan ignorance about the intricacies of the game; 3) mistaken identity; and 4) last but not least, gender bias.

That’s an impressive apology performance for a youngster, but not enough to wrest the women’s crown from Serena Williams, whose “regret” over cursing and threatening a lineswoman had to be dragged out of her over three days — and even then came with the requisite excuse: “I’m a very intense person and a very emotional person.”

Bravo, Serena. Bravo.

Contact Jim Gordon at gjames43@msn.com.